Enlarged version: challenges to comprehension
Home/Search
Documents >>
Themes >>
Visuals >>
Context >>
FAQ/Contact >>

Joy in the Present
Alternative view of segmented documents via Kairos
      

10th March 2008 | Draft

Transforming the Edge of the World

through Voiding the Centre

- / -

Conclusion to Where There is No Time and Nothing Matters: Cognitive Challenges at the Edge of the World, highlighting and giving focus to various themes of an earlier study (In Quest of Optimism Beyond the Edge -- through avoidance of the answering process) in the light of travels in Tasmania during completion of its final version.
Introduction
Traumascape -- of the "White Man's Dreaming"?
Terra cognita vs Terra incognita
Interweaving Demonic and Daimonic Associations in Collective Memory (Annex A)
-- Demonic associations and demonisation
-- Unusual, unsayable, unsaid, untruth -- and denial
-- Prefiguration: Van Diemen's Land as strategic pioneer in the treatment of dissent and otherness
-- Daimonic associations: imaginative, aesthetic, inspirational or spiritual
-- Refiguration of "the other" through fantasy
Memory Challenges at the Edge of the World (Annex B)
-- Symbolic journey -- to the "Edge of the World"
-- Dubious associations -- with the "Centres of the World"
-- Amnesia at the "Edge of the World" -- a key to unrealistic optimism?
-- Mnemonic devices for collective remembrance
Import of Nothingness and Emptiness through Happening and Mattering (Annex C)
-- Varieties of nothingness and emptiness
-- Questionable understanding of emptiness and nothingness
-- "Mattering" and "Happening"
-- "Nothing" emerging through combinations of "mattering" and "happening"
-- Dynamic complexification: integration of "no time"
-- Emergence of "nothing": creating "cognitive shelters"
-- Emergence of "nothing": globalization as exemplar
-- Emergence of "nothing": "import" of significance
-- Polarization and the dynamics of nothingness
Conclusion: Transforming the Edge of the World through Voiding the Centre
-- Paradoxical proximity of "centre" and "edge"
-- Problematic exploitation of edge and centre
-- Reframing spatio-temporal topology as a source of richer metaphors
-- Emergence of a cognitive singularity
-- Strategic implications
-- Symbolic renaming of "Cradle Mountain/Valley" ?
References

Conclusion

The different threads explored above and in the annexes can be further interrelated in response to issues raised in the initial paper (In Quest of Optimism Beyond the Edge -- through avoidance of the answering process).

Paradoxical proximity of "centre" and "edge"

This may be variously evident in:

  • the similarity of the intuitions expressed at the "centre" of the world and at the "edge of the world"
  • the advantages and disadvantages held to be associated with each
  • the degree to which the search for, and pursuit of, an "edge" is associated cognitively with being at a "centre", notably in the case of mountaineering
  • the typically framing of the challenge for the disadvantaged as one of navigating from the edge to the centre, whereas for those at the centre it is a question of being at (or cultivating) an edge (in the pursuit of glory, status, or excitement) or, alternatively of retiring from the centre to an edge (in an effort, paradoxically, to be more centered).

The "edge of the world" and the "centre of the world" are both to be experienced "nowhere" and "everywhere"; as such they are closely connected, if not identical in some paradoxical manner. This raises the question as to any implied "flat earth" understanding of the space on which they are to be found. Any trace of such a simplistic model, implied by such metaphors, would be especially dubious in the case of worldviews and belief systems. Curiously the "utopia" for which many quest derives from that has the intentional double meaning of "good place" and "no place". The challenge is exemplified by Maurice Fullard Smith (This Is It: the art of happily going nowhere. Longman, 2007).

The relationship between the "centre" of any colonial power (such as Britain) and its peripheral "edge" (such as Van Diemen's Land) indicative of how the mindset of the centre is projected onto that edge -- and onto other edges. The challenge of governance remains that of transforming that topological relationship.

But, especially challenging, and far more evident than the relationship between "England" and "Van Diemen's Land", is the relationship between "Washington" and Guantanamo Bay" (or "Abu Ghraib"). Although the edge and centre are conceived as remote from each other in each case, it is terrifyingly clear how close they are in the latter case. How is this proximity to be recognized cognitively? Through what kind of cognitive wormhole do those responsible transition from one to the other?

This is of course a model of the situation encountered by all on the streets of any city -- the cognitive transition between firmly encapsulating the "threat" of the beggar and righteously celebrating one's own high principles. Such wormhole familiarity is acquired early.

Problematic exploitation of edge and centre

The case of "Van Diemen's Land" illustrates:

  • the tendency to search for an edge at which (or over which) untreatable elements can be "dumped", rather than "recycling" them in some way -- with the additional advantage of being able to "forget" them (thereby enabling collective amnesia); namely a form of ultimate "sink"
  • the operation of a controlling centre -- employed by some as a point of reference for values, even to the point of seeking to return there
  • the opportunity of the edge, perceived from the centre, for new ("green field") development (exemplifiying those same values) -- irrespective of prior claims and dynamics through which the conditions there have been sustained

Paradoxical senses of "space" and "time"

As with the spatial metaphors of edge and centre, those of time also have complex experiential implications. The "present moment" and the "end of time" are both to be experienced at "no time" and "all the time"; as such they too are closely connected, if not identical.

It follows, as highlighted above, that such paradoxical senses are variously evident in the contrasts and commonalities of the metaphors of:

  • "White Man's Dreaming" whether:
    • framed by the optimistic intuitions of physicists and others (as discussed in the initial paper (cf Robin Le Poidevin, Relationism and Temporal Topology: Physics or Metaphysics?, 1990)
    • aspirations towards an idylic future (embodied in the elusive present of a "Waldheim experience"), nostalgia for a golden past (lost in the mists of time)
  • "Black Man's Dreaming" named and experienced as the Dreamtime, or as more generally documented by Darrell Posey (Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity, 1999

These variously offer different senses of "time stopping" and a degree of co-existence of past and future in an eternal present, perhaps exemplified in "White Man's Dreaming" by:

  • The first shall be last, and the last shall be first (Matthew 20:16)
  • And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time (T S Eliot, Little Gidding)
  • Stands still the clock at ten to three, and is there honey still for tea? (Rupert Brooke, The Old Vicarage Grantchester, 1912)
  • He also serves who stands and waits (John Milton, Sonnet 26, 1673)
  • To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour... (William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 1803)

It is unfortunate that in the light of the profoundest insights of physicists, mystics and nature lovers of the "White Man's Dreaming" that the Dreamtime of the "Black Man's Dreaming" should be considered so questionable and unproductive in comparison.

Reframing spatio-temporal topology as a source of richer metaphors

The preceding issues imply a challenge to the conventional understandings of the geometry from which metaphors are selected to order experience. Worlds, whether physical or cognitive, do not have edges; understood as spheres, they are finite but unbounded -- except in those cases explored by science fiction.

This is however a case of "superficial" or "lateral" thinking. In terms of "voluminous" thinking, a world has both an edge and a boundary. Unfortunately the possibilities and constraints of the more complex perspective do not effectively influence the superficial "flat earth" approach to global strategy that continues optimistically to be inspired by lateral expansion and growth over the surface of the globe.

The challenges and possibilities might be usefully highlighted by recognizing a sequence of progressively more subtle relationships between edge and centre:

  • centre point of a line (namely centre embedded in edge, as classically described in Flatland: a romance of many dimensions, 1884),
  • centre of a circle (typical of centre/periphery models like Britain/Van Diemen's Land)
  • sphere or globe (as promoted in support of understandings of geopolitical globalization, with "centres" distributed around a surface essentially experienced as flat, and no significance attached to the Earth's centre, perhaps well-highlighted by Sphereland, 1965)
  • empty centered flat ring (symbolized by the Chinese bi, reflecting the transcendental, timeless role upheld for the traditional Chinese Emperor)
  • sphere or globe understood as having a virtual centre (as promoted with respect to structures based on tensegrity)
  • the simple torus topologically known as a 1-torus (the 0-torus, of lesser complexity, is the commonly known sphere)
  • more complex constructs, such as the hypersphere, of potentially greater relevance to more fruitful ways of relating centre and edge [more]

Specifically such concerns raise questions about the manner in which distinctions (cuts) are made, represented and comprehended (***). They point to the relevance of arguments, discussed above, by Michael Schiltz. The question is how current and future understanding should be better framed and supported by metaphors drawn from a more complex geometry. This would then provide the condition for understanding and communication regarding the dynamics to be expected at what was previously experienced as "edge" or "centre" -- and the challenges of pathways to enable movement between them.

How complex does the geometry of an edge/centre need to be to hold the intuitions associated with it as a metaphor? Of particular interest is the nature of the "catastrophes" (cognitive or otherwise) in such contexts and the peculiar nature of the dynamic boundaries with which it is then important to deal (Conformality of 7 WH-questions to 7 Elementary Catastrophes: an exploration of potential psychosocial implications, 2006). Surfing (wind or sea) offers experiential insights that are far from having been embodied as metaphors in cognitive response to other contexts.

To the extent that "edge" and "centre" are in close "proximity", whatever the transformation from one to the other, what then is the form offering the special kind of curvature that holds the pathway(s) to move between them? A useful indication in this respect is derived from challenging simplistic understandings of the conveyor metaphor -- whereby it is assumed that people or goods are transported from one condition to another. Understood as a one-way conveyor, this totally obscures the dynamic operation of any conveyor dependent on a return pathway that is metaphorically more supportive of complex insights (Potential Misuse of the Conveyor Metaphor: recognition of the circular dynamic essential to its appropriate operation, 2007).

If a form of appropriate curvature is identified, also of cognitive relevance is the nature of the horizon effects it then indicates, namely what is "visible" from where? How is threat and "otherness" associated with conditions "over the horizon" -- in terra incognita? Since the metaphor of vision is so universally used with respect to the future (often by bespectacled futurists and strategists), it is relevant to ask what distortions and deficiencies should be considered for which corrective measures are typically sought in the physical case (Metaphor and the Language of Futures, 1993). What indeed might be their cognitive analogues?

The challenge is then how to "roll up" or "wrap" space-time so as to ensure the necessary contiguity of centre and edge as a source of more appropriate metaphors through which to re-cognize, re-member and re-mind. This challenge of spatio-temporal topology might be explored in several ways:

With respect to the Klein bottle, Melanie Purcell (1999) notably points out that:

Truth is relative to the perspective of the observer, and the nature of the perception of reality will determine the nature of the truth expressed. In this presentation I want to explore the relationships between opposed world views and how these oppositional perspectives will determine the nature of truths held. Most models used to describe relationships create an exclusive domain that exteriorises that which is outside or marginalised by the structure.

The Klein bottle is one structure that creates no exclusive domain as it is a modality that, through a structural twist, unifies the inside and outside surfaces into a continuous surface. Through the use of such a structure, seemingly opposed perspectives can be illustrated as aspects of the whole where seemingly paradoxical environments necessitate a decisive shift from an “either / or” critique to a pluralistic “and / both” scenario. This structure allows for the relativity of truths to be realised as expressions that are inextricably linked to relative world views, and therefore creates a focus for a holistic approach to information generation.

It is perhaps such considerations that would enable global dialogue worthy of the name (Future Generation through Global Conversation: in quest of collective well-being through conversation in the present moment, 1997)

Emergence of a cognitive singularity

Any quest for "where there is no time and nothing matters" raises the question as to whether this is what might be called a cognitive singularity in any spatio-temporal topology -- metaphorically understood. Clearly this would resonate with many of mystical persuasion and clearly it accords with the appreciation of the natural environment at any "Cradle Mountain". It may also resonate with certain theoretical speculations of physicists. Of course it also accords with religious prophecies regarding "end times". Many of these aspects were explored by Umberto Eco, Stephen Jay Gould, Jean-Claude Carrière & Jean Delumeau (Conversations About the End of Time, 1999), notably the "art of slowness" variously promoted by the Slow Movement. Milan Kundera, for example, equates speed to forgetting -- associating slowness with memory, thereby highlighting the relevance of the motto of Cradle Valley to the issues of Annex B.

The question is whether such a cognitive singularity is of any significance in relation to transcending the polarizations with which society is currently bedevilled:

As a singularity, an even more fundamental polarization is that between past and future "where there is no time" (as discussed in Annex C). This points to the merit of combining the arguments made elsewhere with respect to the past (Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment, 2004) and to the future (Presenting the Future, 2001). As with that between positive and negative, there would appear to be time binding pathways which lend themselves to comprehension within a cybernetic framework (Being Positive Avoiding Negativity: management challenge of positive vs negative, 2005).

The condition of such a singularity might be understood as intimately associated with a knowledge-information singularity at which the amount of knowledge-information generated -- of immediate relevance to viability -- exceeds the capacity of any (collective) human cognitive operation to process it. The dynamics of significance then constitute a form of standing wave of self-reflexivity. The points to a form of metasystem transition, namely the emergence of a higher level of organization or control beyond those envisaged in relation to the adaptation of the work of Arthur Young (in Table 2 of Annex C). Such a cognitive singularity is therefore distinct from that hypothesized as a future technological singularity of civilization, which might be understood as more probably related to that of societal collapse.

How does such a cognitive singularity relate to the collective quest for (strategic) wisdom at this time? Through what symbol could such a cognitive singularity be communicated for mnemonic purposes -- and how is this to be distinguished from many religious symbols? Why is the Black Swan, discussed earlier (in Annex B), inadequate for this purpose? As an emblem of probable collapse and cognitive readiness, is it not an appropriate mnemonic for resilient response?

Strategic implications

The phrase "where there is no time and nothing matters" necessarily implies different kinds of strategic challenges and possibilities:

  • potentially most problematic: the condition in which no elements of the world problematique are considered to be of any particular significance or calling for remedial response ("nothing matters"), combined with an acceptance that there is "no time" to do anything anyway (in effect "business as usual")
  • emblematic of a qualitative strategic goal: the condition, to which many might aspire, of absence of stressful preoccupation with time and obligations (perhaps because processes are in place to respond to any needs or maintenance), namely to avoid "pushing the river", rather than "guiding the canoe"
  • cognitive singularity: the condition through which challenges and and possibilities can be reframed such as to offer new pathways (or a new significance to "pathways" and movement along them) as strategic metaphors, possibly in light of the insight of enactivism into "laying down a path through walking" (cf Peter Ellyard: "The future is not a probable place we are being taken to but a preferred place we are creating. The tracks to it are not found and followed but are made by laying and constructing a trail.", 1993)
  • transcendental strategy: the condition in which the urgency of "no time" is indeed recognized, combined with recognition that "no thing" matters, namely calling for a non-materialistic reframing of strategic objectives -- presumably resonating most with those of a faith-based inclination (but raising the question of how their respective understandings are to be reconciled to avoid reinforcing cycles of violence)

The non-action feature of these strategic implications can be considered in the light of various approaches (cf Giovanna Braidotti, Innovating Responses to Crisis: exploring the principle of non-action as a foresight tool, Journal of Futures Studies, November 2007; The Quest for the Socio-Economics of Non-Action, Futures, 25, 10, December 1993; The Art of Non-Decision-Making and the manipulation of categories, 1997). A contrast to "development" might also be fruitfully explored (Veloping: the art of sustaining significance, 1997).

A more creative understanding of "where nothing matters" is required to reframe unfortunate understandings of places "where nothing happens", encouraging migration away from them to urban areas, as illustrated by:

To what extent is the elusive strategic goal of sustainability associated with the dynamics of nothingness "happening" or "mattering"? The cognitive dilemma is perhaps best illustrated by the distinction between "working" and "non-working" forests in Tasmania, or that between "paid" and "unpaid" homeworkers worldwide. It is the misunderstanding of the nature of the "happening of nothing" which inhibits more sustainable policies. In contrast, efforts to make "something happen" may be counter-productive -- effectively by destructively "white-anting" it. Strategically it is a challenge to make "nothing happen" creatively without destroying it.

Although a case is made above for using a more complex topology, there is a case for exploring insights from the disciplines most concerned with the creative use of an edge, namely aerodynamics and aeronautical engineering (Seeking the "Cutting Edge" of Sustainable Community, 1997). Leading and trailing edges, and the structures between them, are carefully designed to ensure maximum lift with minimum resources. Such insights are a powerful corrective to simplistic metaphorical uses of "edge" -- especially where the "lift" sought is so intimately related to optimism. There is also a charm to the metaphor that any "paper", structured by a pattern of concepts, is reminiscent of the paper-and-strut experiments of the early aviators seeking lift -- as celebrated in the cult movie Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. Could the future challenges of exploring cognitive space be helpfully reframed through the patterns of origami -- especially given recent experiments towards launching paper planes from the emptiness of outer space? [video]

Thirty projects form a strategic initiative.
It is the empty centre that makes it useful...
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
(Tentative reconciliation of Tao Te Ching with the icosahedron,
as used by management cybernetician Stafford Beer)

Challenge of identification with the "mattering of nothing"

This curious challenge has been a dilemma for mystics down the centuries. It is of course a dramatic issue for those who are bored "out of their mind" in their current context. It may be framed as part of sensory deprivation, notably as a means of torture.

Gustav Weindorfer, originator of the motto, "where there is no time and nothing matters", clearly understood his relation to Cradle Valley and Cradle Mountain in a manner which exemplified many of the desirable qualities of this understanding. Was the key to embody the surrounding wilderness into a "wilderness of the mind", as explored elsewhere (Psychology of Sustainability: embodying cyclic environmental processes, 2002; Emergence of Cyclical Psycho-social Identity: sustainability as "psyclically" defined, 2007).

More challenging is the nature of the collective identity able to engage in the paradox of "where there is no time". This has been explored in relation to the intentional community of Damanhur and its imaginative collective experiments with time travel (Timeship: Conception, Technology, Design, Embodiment and Operation, 2003). A timeship is contrasted with a spaceship in that description. Science fiction, in the work of M. A. Foster (The Gameplayers of Zan, 1977), provides an interesting account of the paradoxes involved in the "construction" by a community of a space-time ship hidden within a mountain, as with Damanhur:

Let me build a dynamic identification-series for you: consider vehicles. You make a cart, a wagon, hitch it to a pony, and off you go. Its purpose is to go, but it can be stopped, and it doesn't change, or stop being a cart. ..Now consider a bicycle, which must be in balance to go...Now an aircraft; it can only be stopped when it is finished being a functional airplane...You can't stop it just anywhere, and never in the air...Just so the leap to the Ship. It is a quantum leap into a new concept in machines, if indeed that is the proper word. Before, we had machines that could be turned off. The more complex they became, the harder to turn off. With the Ship we enter the concept-world of machines that can't be turned off -- at all. They must be on to exist. Once you reach a certain stage in the assembly of it, it's on and that's all there is to it. (pp 369-70)

It must be manually flown to hold it in place...Its position at a specific place upon the Earth is not held by gravity and momentum...that it stays in that place, it must be flown there. As we sit here, we move in many ways, but are held fast in a matrix of local forces. The Earth rotates...And if we do not compensate, then the Ship would drift off on its own. (p. 373)

These are indicative of some of the cognitive challenges of sustainability and of the cognitive fusion that might empower such a vehicle (Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006)

Symbolic renaming of "Cradle Mountain/Valley" ?

This exploration has emphasized the role of collective memory, notably that repressed in "Tasmania" with respect to the "Van Diemen's Land" in which the Aborignal people were exterminated, if only through willful negligence. The name "Cradle Mountain" also obscures its identity in the eyes of those people. Annex A notably cited the challenge of collective amnesia and denial explored in Annnex B. Reference was made to the arguments of James Boyce (Van Diemen's Land, 2008) to the effect that:

A central challenge of the early twenty first century is to reconnect this cultural heritage to the great environmental and social questions of our day. (p. 258)

Boyce refers to the argument of Peter Hay (Van Diemonian Essays, 2002) regarding the need to reclaim the "tainted nomenclature" of Van Diemen's Land at a time when leaders are "santising Australian history for political ends" and efforts are intensifying to privatise all that remains common. This is the basis for a case to reclaim the nomenclature of the iconic centre of Tasmania -- a World Heritage Site -- as a means of collectively remembering what it represents for Tasmania, for Australia and for the world..

What is the import of those who died in Van Diemen's Land? And "where" might they be considered to be, now that time has stopped for them? Does their nothingness matter, and through what happening does it acquire import? Would any memorial to their memory be as controversial as the Yasukuni Shrine -- despite that, in the case of Australia, the "imperialists" won and those who resisted to the last lost? With what is honour then to be associated? (cf Honour Essential to Psycho-social Integrity: challenge of dishonourable leadership to the nameless, 2005)

One Aboriginal poet, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, offered the insight:

"Let no-one say the past is dead, the past is all about us and within"

It is of a kind with that of James Boyce (Van Diemen's Land, 2008): "Van Diemen's Land never vanished...it went underground"

It took persistent research to locate the presumed Aboriginal name of Cradle Mountain, namely War loun dig er ler. It has been notably employed by Tasmanian artist Bea Maddock in her landscape panorama Terra Spiritus...with a darker shade of pale (1998) -- using Aboriginal and English place names to weave a pattern that connects the whole of Tasmania. The name remains to be confirmed, together with its representation in the composite language Palawa Kani, and possibly its meaning in what is essentially -- and perhaps appropriately -- a lost language.

Is there a case for renaming "Cradle Mountain" as part of the collective healing and reconciliation process within the traumascape -- within Tasmania, within Australia, and with respect to more generic resonances that would honour such an initiative?

The case for renaming in the light of this exploration as a whole, could consider the following:

  • the fact that many topographical features in multilingual countries may have several names to reconcile historical, political and psychological sensitivities -- Uluru and Ayer's Rock are now both used (see List of double placenames)
  • the arguments for repackaging Ayer's Rock as Uluru in the iconic centre of Australia
  • arguments relating to Remembrance Day (as presented in Annex B)
  • the significance of any variant name in Palawa Kani
  • public relations concerns and possibilities with respect to tourism and the larger significance embodied -- as it might prove attractive to higher quality tourism
  • the degree to which it could symbolize a reconciliation between various "Dreamings"
  • the role of such an initiative in evoking richer and more profound stories and myths -- that honour all the voices of past, present and future

Suggestive possibilities, in English, could combine or include:

  • Mountain of Remembrance (an association to Remembrance Day)
  • Mountain of Reconciliation (an association to reconciliation processes)
  • Mountain of the Dead
  • Mount Analogue (an association to its significance for development of understanding)
  • Mountain of the Unknown Dream(ing) (an association to lost dreams of the past and those yet to emerge)
  • Mountain of the Lost Dream(ing)
  • Mountain of Unknowing
  • Mountain of the Unknown People (an association to memorials to the "unknown soldier")
  • Mountain of the Unremembered People

Such renaming of the mountain (and valley) might be the basis for a powerful new healing story for Australia as a whole -- especially if a name in Palawa Kani is associated with any English variant. The initiative might set a fruitful introspective precedent for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission -- highlighting the need to extend the current cenotaph references to "Lest We Forget" so as to include the victims long forgotten within the Commonwealth lands.

Given the contemporary importance of "getting to the edge", of being "at the leading edge" and of "living on the edge", as indicators of significance and relevance to progress in the face of current challenges (and thereby being "at the centre"), the following adaptation of a well-known "poem" would seem to be appropriate [see other adaptations]
Ensuring a viable future for the world
is to be understood as dependent on getting to an edge.
Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.
Everybody thought that Anybody could do it,
but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody
when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
However, given its association with collective amnesia and selective memories, the challenge of the relation of the edge to the centre is usefully highlighted by the following classical poem

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
(from W B Yeats, The Second Coming)

References

Stephen D. Arata. The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the anxiety of reverse colonization Victorian Studies 33, Summer 1990, pp 621-645

Phil Bagust. Vampire Dogs and Marsupial Hyenas: fear, myth and the Tasmanian Tiger's extinction. In: Peter Day. Vampires: myths and metaphors of enduring evil. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2006, pp 94-108

Christopher Bollas. The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. London: Free Association Books, 1987.

David Bohm and Jiddu Krishnamurti. The Ending of Time, San Francisco, Harper, 1985

James Bonwick. The Last of the Tasmanians; or, the Black War of Van Diemen's Land. London, Sampson Low Son & Marston, 1870

James Boyce:

  • Van Diemen's Land. Melbourne, Black Inc, 2008 [review]
  • Canine Revolution: the social and environmental impact of the introduction of the dog to Tasmania. Environmental History, 11, 2006, 1
  • "Fantasy Island," in Robert Manne, ed., Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Melbourne: Black Inc., 2003
  • Better to Be Mistaken Than to Deceive: the fabrication of Aboriginal history and the Van Diemonian record, Island, 96, 2004
  • Journeying Home: a new look at the British invasion of Van Diemen's Land 1803-1823, Island, 66, 2006, pp 38-63***

John C. Burnham. Psychotic Delusions as a Key to Historical Cultures: Tasmania, 1830-1940. Journal of Social History, 13, 3 (Spring, 1980), pp. 368-383 [abstract]

James Calder (Ed.). The Circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land in 1815 by James Kelly and in 1824 by James Hobbs. Hobart, Sullivans Cove, 1984

Eleanor Conlin Casella. To Watch or Restrain: female convict prisons in 19th-century Tasmania', International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 5 (1), 2001, pp. 45-72 [abstract]

Alex C Castles. An Australian Legal History. Sydney, Law Book Co Ltd, 1982

Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (CAR). Sharing History: a sense for all Australians of a shared ownership of their history. Canberra, AGPS, 1993. (Key Issue Paper No 4) [text]

Ann Curthoys & John Docker. Is History Fiction? -- the necessity for and difficulty of finding the truth in history. University of New South Wales, 2005 [commentary]

John Davis. The Transpersonal Dimensions of Ecopsychology: nature, nonduality, and spiritual practice. The Humanistic Psychologist, 1998, vol 26, 1-3, pp 60-100. [text]

Peter Day. Vampires: myths and metaphors of enduring evil. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2006

Umberto Eco, Stephen Jay Gould, Jean-Claude Carriere and Jean Delumeau. Conversations About the End of Time. Fromm International, 1999

R. Evans and B. Thorpe. The Massacre of Aboriginal History. Overland. 2001, 163, pp 21-40.

John Frost ("late of Van Diemen’s Land"):

  • The Horrors of Convict Life. Hobart, Sullivan’s Cove, 1856/1973 [review]
  • A Letter to the People of Great Britain and Ireland on Transportation showing the effects of Irresponsible Power on the Physical and Moral Conditions of Convicts. London: 1857, 2nd edition

Ken Gelder. Reading the Vampire. London, Routledge, 1994

Ken Gelder and Jane M. Jacobs. Uncanny Australia: sacredness and identity in a postcolonial nation. Melbourne, Melbourne UP, 1998.

Margaret Giordano:

  • A Man and a Mountain: the story of Gustav Weindorfer. Launceston, Regal Publications, 1987
  • Tasmanian Tales of the Supernatural. Launceston, Regal Publications, 2001

Germaine Greer. We can dream too. The Guardian, 19 June 2004 [text]

Joanna Griffiths. The Varieties of Nature Experience. World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion, 6, 3, 2002 , pp. 253-275 [abstract]

Andrew Gunstone. Reconciliation, Nationalism and the History Wars. Monash University, Australian Indigenous Studies, 2004 [text]

Zali Gurevitch. The Symposium: Culture as Daimonic Conversation. Human Studies, 21, 4, October, 1998, pp 437-454 [abstract]

Patrick Harpur. Daimonic Reality: a field guide to the Other World. London, Penguin, 1994 [review]

Peter Hay:

  • Tasmania: the strange and verdant politics of a strange and verdant island. Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island, 2000 [text]
  • Myths Floating on the Tides of History. Forty Degrees South, 4, 1996, pp 8-15.
  • The Politics of Tasmania’s World Heritage Area: contesting the democratic subject. Centre for Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania [text]
  • Port Arthur. Where Meanings Collide, Island, no 67, Winter, 1996.
  • Vandiemonian Essays. Hobart, Walleah Press, 2002 [extracts]

Roslynn Haynes. From Habitat to Wilderness; Tasmania's role in the policising of place, In: David Trigger and Gareth Griffiths (Ed) Disputed Territories: Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies. Hong Kong University Press, 2003, pp 81-108

James W. Heisig. Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 2001.

John Henderson. Observations on the Colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. Adelaide, Libraries Board of south Australia, 1965 (facsimile edition)

Michael E. Hoare. "All Things Are Queer and Opposite": scientific societies in Tasmania in the 1840's. Isis, 60, 2 (Summer, 1969), pp. 198-209 [abstract]

Robert Hughes. The Fatal Shore: a history of the transportation of convicts to Australia, 1787-1868. London, Collins Harvill, 1987

Ken Inglis and Jock Phillips. War Memorials in Australia and New Zealand: A Comparative Survey, in: Rickard, J. & Spearritt, P (eds) Packaging the Past? Public Histories. Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 1991

Anthony Judge:

  • "Human Intercourse": "Intercourse with Nature" and "Intercourse with the Other", 2007 [text]
  • Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment. Journal of Futures Studies: epistemology, methods, applied and alternative futures, 9, 1, August 2004, pp 3-12 [text]
  • Global Strategic Implications of the "Unsaid" From myth-making towards a "wisdom society", 2005 [text]
  • Global Civilization of Vampires Governance through Demons and Vampires on Spin, 2005 [text]
  • University of Earth: Questing for a more comprehensive dream, 1999 [text]
  • From Information Highways to Songlines of the Noosphere: global configuration of hypertext pathways as a prerequisite for meaningful collective transformation. Futures, 30, 1998, 2/3, pp 181-7 [text]
  • Dancing through Interfaces and Paradoxes: group alchemy in the empty Red Centre, 1997 [text]
  • Proposal for a Learning Exchange between the Swadhyaya community (Western India) and the Pitjantjatjara community (Central Australia), 1998 [text]
  • Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory a critique of the Club of Rome Report: No Limits to Learning, 1980 [text]

Marilyn Lake. Convict women as objects of male vision: an historiographical review, Bulletin of the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies 2(1) 1989, pp. 40-48

Steven William Laycock. Nothingness and Emptiness: a Buddhist engagement with the ontology of Jean-Paul Sartre. State University of New York Press, 2001

Greg Lehman. The Trouble with Paradise. Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University [text]

R. D. Lumb. The Constitution of the Australian States. University opf Queenesland Press, 1963/1991

Robert Manne (Ed.). Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Melbourne, Black Inc., 2003 [review] [introduction]

Robert Manne. Pearson’s Gamble, Stanner’s Dream: the past and future of remote Australia. The Monthly Essays, August 2007, #26 [text]

Anne McMahon. Tasmanian Aboriginal Women as Slaves. Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Papers and Proceedings 23, No. 2 (1976).

Henry Melville. The History of Van Diemen's Land: From the Year 1824 to 1835, Inclusive, During the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur, Part II, ed. & intro. George Mackaness. Sydney: D.S. Ford, 1959

A. Dirk Moses:

  • 'Genocide in Australia?', in Deborah Gare and David Ritter, eds., A Land Without Limits: Australian History and Society Since 1788 (Melbourne: Thomson Learning, 2007)
  • 'Revisionism and Denial’, in Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, ed. Robert Manne (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2003), pp 337-370)

Sharon Morgan. Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: creating an Antipodean England. Cambridge University Press, 1992

Mudrooroo (aka Colin Johnson and Mudrooroo Narogin):

  • Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World. Melbourne, Hyland House, 1983
  • Master of the Ghost Dreaming. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1991.
  • The Undying. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1998
  • Underground. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1999
  • Writing from the Fringe. Melbourne, Hyland House, 1990.

Robert Paddle. The Last Tasmanian Tiger: the history and extinction of the Thylacine. Cambridge University Press, 2000

S. Petrow:

  • A Case of Mistaken Identity: the Vandemonian Spirit and the Law. Tasmanian Historical Studies, 6, 1998, (1) pp 28-32
  • Combating the Hated Stain: Victorian Legislation Against Vandiemonian Convicts in the 1850s. Australia & New Zealand Law & History E-journal, 2005 [abstract]

Adam Phillips. Side Effects. London, Penguin, 2006 [review] [review]

John Pilger. A Secret Country: the hidden Australia. Knopf, 1989/1991

John Pilger and Alan Lowery (films):

  • The Secret Country: The First Australians Fight Back (1985)
  • Welcome to Australia: The Secret Shame Behind the Sydney Olympics (1999) [description]

Runoko Rashidi:

  • Black War: the destruction of the Tasmanian Aborigines. 1998 [text]
  • The Black Presence in Tasmania: A Case of Genocide. The Challenger, 21, Feb 1996
  • Black War: The Destruction of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Rhythm of  the Drum 2, 4, 1996, pp 18-22.
  • The Black Presence in Australia, Tasmania and the South Pacific. The Key 4, 7, Jul/Aug 1997, pp 2-4.
  • Tasmanian Devils -- The Destruction of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Black History Magazine, 1999, pp 57-63.

K. M. Reid. The Horrors of Convict Life: British radical visions of the Australian penal colonies, Cultural and Social History (forthcoming, 2007) [preprint]

Henry Reynolds:

  • 'The Hated Stain': the aftermath of transportation in Tasmania. Historical Studies, 14, 1969, 53, pp 19-31.
  • Fate of a Free People: A Radical Re-Examination of the Tasmanian Wars. Melbourne, Penguin, 1995

Hilarie Roseman. Humiliation Flowering from Historical Roots: an Australian experience. Metung, 2005 (Dignity and Humiliation Studies) [text]

Lyndall Ryan. The Aboriginal Tasmanians. Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1996, 2nd edition

Xavier Sallantin:

  • Le Livre Zéro ou la genèse du sens. Groupe Béna, 1982
  • Le Monde n’est pas malade, il enfante. Groupe Béna, 1982

Theresa Sainty. Tasmanian places and Tasmanian Aboriginal language. Placenames Australia (Newsletter of the Australian National Placenames Survey), 2005

Sally Schnackenberg. Kate Weindorfer -- the woman behind the Man and the Mountain: a biography of Kate Julia Weindorfer, wife of Cradle Montain pioneer Gustav Weindorfer. Tasmania, Regal Publications, 1998.

Anton Luis C. Sevilla. Poetries of Nothingness: finding a common ground between Heidegger, Zen Buddhism and Theoretical Physics. A Thesis Submitted to The Philosophy Department Ateneo de Manila University [text]

Nicholas Shakespeare. In Tasmania. Harvill, 2004

Joe Simpson. Touching the Void. Vintage, 1998

W. E. H. Stanner:

  • The Dreaming, 1953
  • White Man Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938-1973. Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1979

P. Tardif. Notorious Strumpets and Dangerous Girls: Convict women in Van Diemen's Land 1803-1829. Sydney, 1990

John Tarrant:

  • Bodhidharma's Vast Emptiness: Forgetting Who You Are and Making Use of Nothing. 2006 [text]
  • Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans to Bring You Joy. Harmony, 2004

Rebe Taylor:

  • Unearthed: the Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island. Wakefield Press.
  • Breaking a Loud Silence. The Age, 13 September 2003 [text]

Robert Travers. The Tasmanians: The Story of a Doomed Race. Melbourne: Cassell, 1968.

Maria Tumarkin. ‘Wishing You Weren’t Here …’: Thinking About Trauma, Place and the Port Arthur Massacre. Fresh Cuts: New Talents, 2001 [text]

Gerry Turcotte. Re-mastering the Ghosts: Mudrooroo and Gothic Refigurations. Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong, 2003 in: Oboe, A (ed), Mongrel Signatures. Reflections on the Work of Mudrooroo, Rodopi Press, Amsterdam, 2003, pp 129–151. [text]

Clive Turnbull. Black War: the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1948/1965.

Penny Van Toorn. The Terrors of Terra Nullius: Gothicising and De-Gothicising Aboriginality. World Literature Written in English 32.2 & 33.1, 1992-93, pp 87-97.

John West. The History of Tasmania. Launceston, Henry Dowling, 1852/1966 [facsimile edition]

Keith Windschuttle:

  • The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, 2001[summary]
  • The Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian history: Part II The fabrication of the Aboriginal death toll Quadrant, November 2000 [text]
  • The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, 2002 [review] [review] [review]

Creative Commons License
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.